Archive | Hybrid Scrapbooking

Digital Scrapbooking freebie below!

I reckon alphabets are one of the major frustrations of scrapbooking!

You know how it goes. You’ve completed a gorgeous scrapbook layout and you need just the right letters to make your title. You go to your alphabet stash and either you don’t have any with the right look and feel for your scrapbook layout design or else you’re missing a few vital letters.

Of course if you’re a digital scrapbooker you just feel a little smug as you go to your digital alpha stash and select the style you want and change the color to suit your scrapbook layout.

But here’s the thing for paper scrapbookers.

Why not combine the best of both worlds?

Hybrid scrapbooking lets you combine digital elements with your paper scrapbook layouts. And you can get some stunning effects.

I made this birthday card for a friend’s daughter. The word ONE is a totally digital element which I created, printed out on photo card and cut out for my card.

If you don’t have a graphic editing program like Photoshop Elements you can type your word into your word processing program and choose a color for your font that matches your layout. Print it onto good quality card and cut it out. It’s not as snazzy as clipping a patterned paper to the word but it can get you the title you need.

Garden Party Cupcake Mini Album Template

I had this cool idea for making a cup cake shaped mini album and I just had to share it with you.

I’ve taken the cup cake element from the Garden Party Mega Scrapbook Kit and turned it into a digital scrapbooking template which you can download by clicking on the image below (And if you’re not a member of the Garden Party you really should be. Just enter your first name and email address in the box at the top right of this page and you’ll start receiving heaps of cool digital scrapbook freebies) . Please note this is a PSD file so it will work with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. I can’t guarantee it to work with other programs.

To make this cute mini album you just open the free digital scrapbooking template file and duplicate the file .

Now drag the digital paper of your choice onto the duplicate template.

Position your paper layer over the ‘frosting’ layer of the template and clip them together (Ctrl+G then Ctrl+E)

Duplicate this file and flip the image horizontally (Image>Rotate>Flip Horizontally)

You’ve now made a double page spread.

Repeat the above steps using the same papers or using complementary papers. I made my album using different papers from the Garden Party Kit as they all coordinate so well together.

You can now print and cut these pages out and add photos and embellishments using paper scrapbooking techniques, or you can use the cup cake shaped pages as backgrounds to create digitally scrapbook pages for your album before printing them out, as I have done.

Whichever approach you use I recommend you use a 190-240 gsm weight paper. I usually use a satin or gloss finish to get a really rich color. And make sure you choose the best quality print mode.

Once you’ve cut out your pages it’s time to assemble your album.

Arrange your pages in the order you want. You will notice that the left pages are different to the right pages. So make sure you match them up correctly.

Now glue the pages back to back

And finally punch a hole through all the pages at the edge where they meet in the centre. Insert a jump ring or tie with some ribbon and you’ve got a cute mini album.

This would make a great gift for a grandparent. You could theme it with photos from the grandchildren’s birthday parties or you might make a recipe book with all the sweet treats your family loves. The choices are endless.

And if you make your album using The Garden Party I’d really love it if you’d post a picture on the Garden Party Facebook Page.

Let me know how you go.

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Naturally I required some intensive therapy to come to terms with this. But once I had gotten over my “where did the last 30 years go” shock I decided that I had to make something a bit special for her in the way of a card. Last year I made a pretty spiffy concertina card which she loved and said “Oooh, my first ‘book’ card!” That made me realise that I had never made an album just for her to keep before.

So I decided to make a mini album covering her last 30 years.

Now when I make a mini-album I like to do it from the ground up; making the pages and cover rather than buying a pre-made chipboard album. I gave myself plenty of time, as I usually do. And I managed to blow most of it away leaving me with a last minute rush, as I usually do. But I was quite pleased with the finished result.

Click on image to see the pages inside

Making a mini album is a really fun thing to do. It’s great to create a whole album in one project and the smaller size helps to make the project less daunting. If you have never made one why not give it a go? You don’t have to make the whole thing from scratch like me. You can buy premade chipboard albums that you can cover and embellish to make a fabulous album. They make wonderful and really appreciated gifts for the special people in your life. Here are a few tips to get you started.

5 tips for making great mini-albums

1. Find a theme to link your pages together. This can be a color scheme, a scrapbooking style, a specific topic or anything that gives a sense of continuity through the pages and helps the album to tell a story. Using a combination of theme ideas will also help to reinforce the continuity. In this album I used papers from the Papermania Chatsworth Collection to maintain a color scheme. I used the same font and style for the titles on all the pages and I themed all the titles by making them follow a similar pattern for my Seona Days album: Early Days, Dress-up Days, School Days, BirthDays, HoliDays.

2. Choose smaller, simple patterns or plains for your background papers. Now I have to admit that I didn’t strictly follow this rule. Several of the patterns in the paper pack I had chosen were a bit on the largish side. So I chose mainly simple pastels with dots for my pages and interspersed them with a few patterned papers in muted tones so they don’t overpower the photos.

3. Add texture and dimension. Following on from the last tip you can make up for the lack of pattern in your papers by adding texture. The papers I chose for Seona’s album had a sort of a linen texture that I really loved. But you can add your own texture by putting your papers through an embossing machine such as a CuttleBug. And a bit of lumpy bumpy doesn’t hurt either. Generally your mini-album will only have a small number of pages. So you can probably afford to add a bit of height to your embellishing. Foam tape is my best friend. If you’re doing a digital album then try out some interesting drop shadows and bevels.

4. Go easy on the embellishments. Because your mini–album pages are so much smaller than your regular scrapbook pages you need to be careful that you don’t over clutter them with embellishments. Try to pick smaller embellishments that won’t overpower the page. And I also like to reinforce the continuity by repeating the same embellishments throughout the album if possible.

5. And most of all, put your love into it. Mini-albums (especially ones you do for other people) are usually a sort of capsule for an idea or an event or, like Seona’s album, a life story. That makes them a bit extra special. Let that feeling shine through in the journaling you write and the themes you choose.

As usual for me, this album was a hybrid scrapbooking project where I combined digital scrapbooking techniques with paper scrapbooking elements. One of the great benefits of this approach is that I can manipulate my photos and digital embellishments to perfectly fit my smaller pages and coordinate with my color scheme. I couldn’t decide on just 3 or 4 photos for the BirthDays page so I created the photo collage digitally, scanned in a background from my paper pack and mounted the collage on it so I could keep all the fuzzy edges and just cut around the paper matt.

And yes, Seona loved it.

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I’ve just made this 50th birthday card for my brother and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a Hybrid scrapbooking card made using both paper scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking techniques and I must confess, this is my absolute favourite form of scrapbooking. It combines the touchy-feely satisfaction of working with paper with the convenience, versatility and virtually unlimited paper and embellishment options of digital scrapbooking.

When I make hybrid scrapbook cards I usually do the design on my computer first so I can play around with ideas. Even if I’m not intending to use digital papers I’ll usually pick a digital paper that’s similar to the ‘real’ one that I intend to use for the purpose of the design. And I’ll use digital elements to stand in for the ‘real life’ ones I’m planning to use. Things like brads and ribbons etc.

Once the design is done I work out which of the digital elements I’m going to use on the card and then print them out. It’s easy to change the color of them if they don’t quite coordinate with my other elements.

On this card I clipped the patterned digital paper I wanted to use (Cheryl Barber’s Etc Collection) to the template and then printed out the whole of the digital design on satin finish photo paper. Then I glued it onto cardstock which I’d printed with the template shape. I cut a slit in the card to thread the ribbon through on the inside before I glued the designed card to the card stock. If I was going to use ‘real’ brads I would also have fixed them to the papers before gluing onto the cardstock.

Then I printed several of the elements of the card separately onto satin photo paper, cut them out and adhered them to the card with foam tape to add further dimension. This worked particularly well with the focal photo because it meant I was able to run the real ribbon over the frame and under the photo.

Like I said earlier, I love the way hybrid scrapbooking combines the best of both of the scrapbooking worlds I love. If you haven’t tried it yourself I urge you to give it a go. It’s the perfect scrapbooking marriage.

And if you’re nervous about the idea of the digital scrapbooking part, just click on the banner below and check out the selection of Beginner Tutorials from Step by Step Digital Scrapbook to help you get started.